Essentially, what Democrats have been saying about income inequality — that it's in a large part due to favorable taxation and deduction policies for high income Americans — is largely right, and that has major implications for a possible sequestration fix.

The Hungerford study, in short, is a big get for the Left.

While this may sound like a bit of esoteric macro-econ, it's very relevant to the ongoing debate over the $1.2 trillion in across the board cuts that sequestration will bring about on March 1.

During the debate over the sequester, Democrats and the Obama administration have repeatedly proposed closing loopholes in the tax code that disproportionally benefit the wealthy in lieu of drastic cuts to each and every sector of government.

Republicans have continued to back the cuts, and have indicated that the only possible replacement they're comfortable with are cuts that are targeted rather than sweeping.

Here's where this study comes in. The study looked at recent data from 1991-2006 in an attempt to tease out why wealth inequality became so much more pronounced in the United States over that period.

The Gini ratio measures the extent to which a country's income distribution deviates from a perfectly equal distribution, and serves as an indicator of the gap between the rich and the poor.

It's become difficult to ascertain what the root cause of this rise in income inequality is.

Republicans have argued that increased big government, taxation and regulations are keeping small business owners down, unable to ascend to a higher income bracket. They have proposed cutting the size of government to enable small business owners to flourish.